


Knitting

by Magicath17



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley - Freeform, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley - Freeform, Kind of angsty, Molly Weasley/Arthur Weasley - Freeform, Mostly Sadness, also death isnt like graphic or anything, idk - Freeform, into thinking there was no death, its like offscreen canon death, just didnt want to deceive anyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 07:33:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magicath17/pseuds/Magicath17
Summary: Every day James comes home to Lily furiously knitting, and over the next month, the Order is outfitted in scarves and socks and hats and mittens, while a drawer in James and Lily's bedroom begins to fill with tiny versions for their growing child. Now when the Marauders come to visit, they bring along yarn and knitting books, as well as whatever odd food Lily is currently craving. For her birthday, they chip in for a beautiful knitting basket to hold all of her books and yarn and new projects, and she holds them all in a group hug for ten minutes and cries that they are the best friends in the world and that she is just the luckiest girl.Or, while on maternity leave from the Order, Lily picks up a new hobby.





	Knitting

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends!  
> So this fic was pretty much the result of me spending an entire day scrolling through the Jily tag on tumblr (an always acceptable pastime). It started as a weird stray idea that turned into a headcanon that turned into me writing it all down and now here we are! I wrote it sort of quickly so I apologize for any plot inconsistencies or confusing run on sentences (commas are my weakness). I couldn't find any info about the original Order headquarters (though tbh I didn't look that hard) so I just decided it was in a house similar to the new Order.  
> Also thanks to my lovely sister elizaham8957 for editing this and bugging me until I posted it!  
> I think I may be rambling again, so thank you so much for reading!!!! Like any other writer comments and kudos are the best present anyone could ever give me, so thanks in advance and enjoy!!!

It starts after her and James decide it's time for her to take a break from Order missions. She knows it's the right choice—from the moment she found out, she knew that this day would come—but still, she can't help but feel a bit panicked, can't do more than force a small smile when James rests a hand on the small swell of her stomach and tells her she has her own, more important mission now. It doesn't make her feel better when she has to sit and listen to the missions assigned to James and the others, has to think about the danger her husband and friends will face as she sits back home helpless. She takes to cleaning the house, scouring every nook and cranny as a way to distract herself. Still, after a few days she finds that scrubbing already shining floors and dusting spotless shelves has lost its effect. But it's this way that she finds it, reaching way back into the junk drawer in a last ditch attempt to organize something. She's not quite sure how it got there— maybe left by a previous owner, or thrown in the drawer carelessly by James when they first moved in— but as she examines her new prize— two long shiny knitting needles protruding from a thick ball of yarn— a new idea strikes her. It takes only a minute to pile everything else back into the drawer, thinking to herself that organization will have to wait for another day, and carry the knitting things to her favorite chair. From there comes trial and error. She spends the next two hours completely engrossed, her brow furrowing as she tries to remember the lessons her grandmother gave her, her teeth worrying her bottom lip as she attempts to make some of her stitches stick and not unravel into nothing, letting out the occasional huff as she wonders how on earth this seemed so simple as a girl.   
  
By the time James returns in the evening, she's managed to puzzle out a basic stitch and has successfully knitted the first few rows of what she declares to her husband will be the best scarf he will ever receive.   
  
James is so happy to see Lily focused on something other than worry that when he leans down to press a kiss to her lips, informing her that of course it will be the best scarf in the world, when she turns her face up to him and gives him a smile that actually reaches her green eyes, he can't help but wrap his arms around her and pull her from her chair, spinning her around the living room and delighting at the sound of her letting out a small laugh — the first one he's heard in awhile.   
  
He's reluctant to ruin her good mood with talk of the Order over dinner, but she insists he tell her what is going on every day, unable to bear being both out of commission and out of the loop. She becomes somber as he updates her on current missions and tells her about the new ones being planned, quietly worrying her bottom lip with her teeth as he talks; she nods once and awhile, but doesn’t say anything. When they've finished eating she silently clears away their plates, and then returns to her chair, untangling the needles from the yarn to begin working on her scarf. She still doesn't speak, but as James watches her over the books he's pretending to read, he notices that after a while the wrinkles on her forehead disappear and the tense set of her face relaxes into a smooth look of calm as her laser focus slowly pushes the worry out of her mind. It's amazing to watch.   
  
The next day, James returns home with two books on knitting and several more balls of yarn. Lily rewards him by draping the finished scarf around his neck. It's not perfect by any means — there are parts that are a bit crooked, or where loose stitches have made a small hole, but it's soft and it's warm and it was made by the woman he loves, so James dramatically flicks an end over his shoulder and strikes a pose, declaring that he shall never take it off. The declaration earns him a giggle and a quick kiss as Lily turns to examine her gifts.   
  
After dinner, she selects one of the new balls of yarn he brought her, and that night James is lulled to sleep by the soft clinking of the metal knitting needles against each other.   
  
Only a day later, she is carefully wrapping her new scarf in paper — this one almost completely straight, and with no holes throughout — and instructing James to bring it to Sirius. Over the next few weeks every person in the Order is delivered one of Lily’s scarves, the quality of them steadily increasing until they look as if they might have been purchased at a shop. She makes James another one, one that has straight edges and no holes and even alternating stitches and colors of yarn, but he still prefers the first one she made, insisting on wearing it around the house as much as possible.   
  
There's a small part of James, on the day he returns home after delivering that final scarf, that is scared Lily will have spiraled again — that with no more scarves to make, she will go back to feeling sad and useless, wandering the house like an animal trapped in a cage and looking at him with those morose green eyes whenever he returned. His fear, he is so grateful to find, is unfounded. As he enters the house, he hears music playing; following it into the living room, he finds Lily, sitting on the floor in sweatpants and one of his shirts, with her hair pulled into a braid she keeps carelessly flicking over her shoulder. Laid out around her are all the knitting books she has amassed, all turned to different pages that she carefully consults before turning to the knitting in her hands. So engrossed is she in her work that he is able to stand at the entrance of the room and just watch her for several minutes before she finally feels his eyes on her and looks up. She smiles at him, wiping away the last lingerings of any fear, and happily announces that she has moved onto making socks.   
  
And so it continues. Every day James comes home to Lily furiously knitting, and over the next month, the Order is outfitted in scarves and socks and hats and mittens, while a drawer in James and Lily's bedroom begins to fill with tiny versions for their growing child. Now when the Marauders come to visit, they bring along yarn and knitting books, as well as whatever odd food Lily is currently craving. For her birthday, they chip in for a beautiful knitting basket to hold all of her books and yarn and new projects, and she holds them all in a group hug for ten minutes and cries that they are the best friends in the world and that she is just the luckiest girl.   
  
Even with a new hobby to distract her most of the time, James can tell that Lily is getting stir crazy. She's not technically on house arrest, but with a war going on, they've agreed it's much safer to keep a low profile, even if that means she spends most days alone in the house. She doesn't say anything, but he can see it in the way he often comes home to find the furniture rearranged, or Lily sitting with her knitting in different rooms, just to get a small change of scenery.   
  
He finally asks her if she wants to come to an Order meeting, just to be able to get out of the house and talk to people. By the ways her face lights up at the suggestion, James guesses it's a good choice. The next morning she gets up early with him, and he makes them both breakfast while she packs her knitting into the basket, chattering about how much she's missed everyone. He bundles her up in a scarf, hat, gloves, and big thick socks (all made by her, of course) and she laughs that she looks more like she's moving to the arctic than going to a meeting, to which he replies that he just wants to show off all of her beautiful merchandise.   
  
When they finally arrive, James is sure he has never seen anyone so happy to spend the day in a dark and gloomy house tucked far away from most of civilization. Lily comes alive in a way that makes James realize just how lonely she must have been these past weeks, giving each person she finds a long hug, demanding they tell her everything they've been up to, and looking at them with the small smile and those serious eyes that says she would love nothing more than to sit for hours and listen to every detail of what has happened in their lives since she last saw them.   
  
When it's finally time for the meeting to start, she gives James a kiss on the cheek and tells him she's going to explore the house, maybe find somewhere to sit and knit for a bit, and that she will find him again when they take a break for lunch. She wanders for a while, peeking into nooks and crannies and corners until her feet start hurting her and her arms are tired from carrying the big basket, and she finds a little sitting room with big windows looking out at the street, settling into a big worn out couch to finish off the baby sweater she had started that week.   
  
She's not sure quite how long has passed, but Lily finds that she doesn't mind sitting alone here, with the big windows to watch people out of and that the walls don't feel like they're closing in on her, and where she can just barely hear the murmur of many voices coming from downstairs. She finishes the sweater, folding it carefully into the basket with her knitting needles, and uses her wand to fill up a mug left behind by one of the permanent Order residents with steaming tea before settling back into the couch cushions. She's thoroughly lost in her thoughts when she hears someone calling hello to her, jumping slightly as she turns to see a woman standing in the door to the room, curly red hair framing her round face and hands crossed over her heavily pregnant stomach.   
  
The woman seems unaffected by Lily's startled expression, instead introducing herself as Molly Weasley and explaining that her brothers are a part of the Order and that since they started living at headquarters full time the only way she's able to see them is to visit here. As she chatters on about how gloomy it is and how she wishes they would at least come home for Sunday dinner sometimes, Lily vaguely remembers James mentioning how the Prewitts' sister had started hanging around since they moved in, laughing about how thoroughly she had thwarted any attempts by her brothers to get her to stay home, and confiding that he personally didn't mind when she stopped by — especially since it usually meant a home cooked meal for everyone assembled. Lily can see why Molly's brothers had had such trouble getting her to stay put — despite her sweet face, there is something about the glint in her eyes and strong plant of her feet that tells Lily nothing moves this woman when she does not want to be moved. Still, as Molly moves into the sitting room, slowly lowering herself into the armchair across from Lily's couch and chattering all the way, Lily finds herself smiling and chatting back and very much liking Molly Weasley.   
  
Molly does indeed make a very good lunch for them all, enlisting Lily to help her prepare, and with the two of them bustling around the very cramped kitchen, bumping into each other and flinging cooking and chopping spells over each other's head and laughing hysterically when the streams of magic get crossed and the celery stalks begin trying to cut up the chicken, Lily is not sure she has ever had this much fun cooking.   
  
After a long lunch that reminds Lily just how much she has missed the Order, while also making her happier than ever to see them again, she and Molly retire back up to their sitting room with fresh cups of tea. They talk about their children — Molly tells Lily about the five she already has and how excited they are to meet their new sibling in just a few days. Lily confides her fears in Molly, about being a mother and bringing a child into their war torn world. In response, Molly takes Lily's hands in her big worn ones, looks her straight in the eyes. and tells her in a steady voice that no war was won by someone with no hope for the future, and what future holds more hope than one with a family in it? It isn't placating — it's not a promise that they will win and the world will be good and safe again — but somehow it is just the comfort that Lily needs to hear, and she lets out a deep breath she didn't know she was holding and wraps Molly in a hug that is just as much a comfort to her as it is the the other woman.   
  
After that they move on to happier topics: Lily tells Molly about her knitting obsession and how it has been keeping the Order warm all winter — to which Molly replies that she had wondered what had prompted them all to obtain such nice new warm clothes. She shows Molly the baby sweater she had finished, letting her exclaim over it and explaining her plan to make ones for herself and James as well — by the time the baby is born, it will be much too warm to wear them, but she thinks she'll tuck them away to be Christmas presents, so on their first Christmas together they can wear matching sweaters and look like a little family. Molly looks very thoughtful as she listens, staring down at the sweater in her hands before meeting Lily's eyes and telling her how matching sweaters sounds like just the most wonderful idea for Christmas she's ever heard. Lily laughs her off, insisting that it is nothing special, but Molly still looks contemplative as she carefully folds the sweater back into the basket.   
  
Soon after that James arrives at the door to tell Lily it's time to return home. As she reaches the entrance to the sitting room she and Molly have shared all afternoon, she is suddenly struck with a thought — turning back to Molly, she pulls the little baby sweater from her basket and presses it into the woman's hands. Molly protests, but Lily insists, saying that when Molly's baby comes it will still be cold enough for sweaters, that she will have plenty of time to make another one and that she likes thinking that this one will be of use. Molly finally relents, accepting it with a smile and another hug and then sending Lily on her way.   
  
Not even a week later Molly gives birth to Ronald Bilius Weasley, and he spends a good deal of the days left in lingering cold bundled up in the sweater from Lily. The Prewitt brothers finally get their wish, as Molly is far too busy with her five children and new baby to make any more visits. By the time she is able to make it back to the Order, the Potters have gone into hiding, and though she only spent one day with her, Molly finds herself missing Lily as she sits in the sitting room they shared, alone with her thoughts and baby Ron.   
  
That Christmas sees the start of the Weasley Christmas sweater tradition, Molly gifting each member of her family with a newly made sweater, embroidered with their first initial for easy distinction, of both sweater and child. Only Ron's sweater is different, as he wears the plain sweater from Lily, and Molly wishes the Potters were not hidden away so Lily could see the gift put to good use.   
  
A few days after Christmas, Molly pays another visit to the Order, and Sirius shows her a picture of the Potters taken on Christmas, James smiling at his wife as Lily bounces a laughing baby Harry on her hip, the three of them dressed in the matching sweaters she had talked to Molly about. Molly thinks of their own Christmas picture, filled to the brim with people, and for a brief moment considers how things might have been different, how the Potters might have been able to celebrate the holiday with all of their friends and family, how Harry and Ron might have been able to have play dates while the Order held meetings — but she quickly banishes the thought, knowing that dreaming of what ifs will change nothing. Instead she tells Sirius what a lovely picture it is and, like the rest of the Order, neglects to mention how technically he shouldn't have it at all.   
  
Ron outgrows the sweater after his first full winter, and Molly packs it away with the rest of the baby clothes she has been saving for the new baby. That autumn is unusually warm, so she is standing in the yard surrounded by the chaos that isher many children as they played after dinner when Arthur returns home late to tell her that the Potters are dead and the war is over. As Molly stands there, holding a fussy Ginny and trying to decide how she feels about that information, she feels the first cold wind of the season blow in. That night, after the children are all asleep, she digs through the boxes of baby clothes until she unearths Lily Potter's sweater, and the next morning she carefully puts it on her daughter, taking an extra minute to kiss Ginny's soft head and shed a tear for the woman she had met only once, but who had shown her such kindness. That Christmas Ginny is the one in the unmarked sweater, and there is no picture of the Potters to compare it to.   
  
When Ginny outgrows the sweater, it is packed back into the boxes of baby clothes and stored in the back of the attic, to be saved for future grandchildren someday. With the chaos of raising seven children consuming her thoughts, Molly largely forgets about the sweater, even her brief encounter with Lily fading in her mind until it's little more than a warm feeling and the image of a smile and green eyes when someone happens to mention her name. She still makes Christmas sweaters every year, for though the inspiration is now a lost moment in her memory, the importance of it remains firm in her mind, and so she makes them again and again, until it is a tradition fully cemented in the Weasley family.   
  
Many years pass, and suddenly Ron is starting Hogwarts, and they are all bustling through King's Cross Station towards platform 9 and 3/4 and there is a rumpled and lost looking boy standing nearby. He looks up at her with those big, nervous eyes through the frames of his glasses, and Molly feels a little of her breath steal away from her. Her first thought regarding Harry Potter, as a fragment of memory from that day eleven years ago wanders through her mind, is the same as so many others before and after her: he has his mother's eyes. The thought lasts only a moment before she is swept up in helping him find the platform and wrangling her sons onto the train and consoling Ginny. By the time the hustle and bustle has died down, memories of Lily have retreated to the depths of her memory, so she just tells Arthur that Harry looks like a nice boy as they leave the train station arm in arm.   
  
When Christmas time comes around that year, Molly doesn't even consider making Harry a sweater — she just does. It's not until she's packing it up next to Ron's that she stops to think about why she did make Harry a sweater without a thought. Somewhere in the back of her mind there's an explanation waiting to be unearthed, but Molly is so tired from late nights organizing everyone's presents that she is willing to accept that it just felt right to do so, and finishes wrapping the sweaters without another hesitation. By the next year Harry is such an ingrained part of the family that there's no question of whether or not he gets a sweater; he slips into the tradition just as easily as he slipped into the family.   
  
More years pass, another war is fought and won, losses are sustained, but somehow they survive. Another Christmas arrives at the Burrow, with Harry now an official part of the family, Hermione joining as well. Molly isn't quite sure who asks the question — it comes from somewhere behind her as she distributes the many sweaters she continues to make every year, but everyone is laughing and asking why _did_ she start making the sweaters? Hermione suggests that maybe it was when she started having children, a new tradition for a new family, and though the guess rings with a bit of truth in Molly's mind, she admits it's not correct, as she didn't start until after Ron was born. And then she is thinking, diving back into the deep recess of her memory, and suddenly there it is, as if it had been waiting perfectly preserved for the day it could be most put to use: the memory of that day so long ago, the only day she knew Lily Potter, but a day that left such a mark on her that here she is, so many years later, still making Christmas sweaters.   
  
She doesn't even realize she's left the room until she reaches the doors to the attic, the sounds of her children's concerned voices wafting up to her as she pushes through years worth of boxes and furniture and junk to the old box of baby clothes, buried under years of different memories. It's harder for her to unearth the box then it was to put it there, and the break she has to take on the stairs as she carries it down reminds Molly that she's not quite as young as she once was, but she manages.   
  
The looks of puzzlement and concern on her children’s faces make her want to stop and laugh as she returns to the living room, but instead she keeps moving, placing the box in the middle of the floor and pulling it open. As she digs through the clothes, she begins to recount the story, letting all of the details of that day that had been tucked away in her mind come forward and pour out as she searches, glancing up every now and then to see the rapt attention everyone is giving her, and to see Harry holding very tightly to Ginny's hand. As she nears the end she pauses, and with a triumphant cry she unearths what she was looking for. The sweater is creased and a bit faded from being tucked away for so long, and it's a bit worn from being well loved by not one but two babies. A part of her wishes she had done more to preserve it, but the larger part remembers how eager Lily was for the sweater to be used, and thinks she probably would have liked to see the evidence of that.   
  
Now Molly picks the sweater up gently, carrying it over to Harry and waiting for him to unravel his hand from his wife's before she hands it gently to him. He handles it with the utmost care, looking at it reverently, and if they had not just heard the story of its history, it might have been a bit comical — a grown man holding an old baby sweater like it was the holy grail. Molly quietly tells Harry she is sorry she forgot about it until now, and that she hopes maybe it can be put to use again some day for Harry's own children, for if she thinks that seeing it loved well by Molly's children would have made Lily happy, she knows that seeing it loved by Lily’s own grandchildren would have been even better. Harry carefully lays the sweater aside to wrap Molly in a hug, and when he finally pulls back she wipes away his tears with the pad of her thumb, worn and smooth from years of doing just this to all her children.   
  
Eventually, Harry does give the sweater to his children, each one wearing it throughout their first winter before it is packed away for their children, and their children, and so on and so forth until most of the color has faded from it and the fraying cuffs have to be stitched up and the elbows have to be patched. And still it is passed on through the Potter family, to be worn by each new member for their first winter, and especially for their Christmas portrait, where the whole family gathers in their newly gifted Christmas sweaters, Weasley traditions mixing with Potter ones until they are as inseparable as the families themselves. And so from the scared girl knitting alone to the woman who was her friend for just one day and to her children and then back to the girl's son and down and down through his family the sweater lives. And though over time most of its story fades away and it is patched and repaired almost beyond recognition, a part of Lily Potter lives on with it.


End file.
